Aggregating Local Preferences to Guide Marginal Policy Adjustments
Daniel J. Benjamin, Ori Heffetz, Miles S. Kimball, Nichole Szembrot
American Economic Review · 2013 · Volume 103 · Issue 3
Abstract
We propose a social choice rule for aggregating preferences elicited from surveys into a marginal adjustment of policy from the status quo. The mechanism is: (i) symmetric in its treatment of survey respondents; (ii) ordinal, using only the orientation of respondents' indifference surfaces; (iii) local, using only preferences in the neighborhood of current policy; and (iv) what we call "first-order strategy-proof," making the gains from misreporting preferences second order. The mechanism could be applied to guide policy based on how policy affects responses to subjective well-being surveys.
Keywords
Policy Objectives, Policy Designs and Consistency, Policy Coordination, General Welfare
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